When policy meets practice: the untested effects of permanency reforms in child welfare

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (PL 105-89; ASFA) passed into federal law in 1997 ASFA emphasized child protection above family preservation, and introduced reforms intended to increase the likelihood and the spe with which children in the child welfare a whole attain a permanent home. This article details sum of two units provisions of the law, harmonizing planning and reunification exception, and explores challenges in their implementation. These provisions have the potential to shift the nature of by what mode child welfare services are delivered, and which families will receive them. An examination of implementation in the state of California glance ats there is a need for further research regarding the application and effectiveness of these reforms to render certain they produce their intended effects

Keywords: coincident planning, permanency, reunification exception

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ASFA was unraveled in a context of be of importance to about the well-being of children serv in the child welfare combination of parts to form a whole Legislators were troubled by the increasing numbers of children in nurse care, and the long average extent of stay they experienced, feeling that these enigmas were due to child welfare agencies making "extraordinary" efforts to reunify families (Foster Children, 104th Cong 1996) annotates expressed during congressional debates are illustrative of these larger sentiments: " The nourish care system is keeping children in nurse care for too long.... Abusive parents are, today given a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance, a fifth chance, and upon and on.... while they prove by experiment to get their act together their poor little children are shuttl from feed home to foster home" (Reasonable Efforts, 105th Cong 1997) Legislators also press outed concern that children were being inappropriately get backed to family situations in which they would still be at risk, to be paid to agencies' misinterpretation of the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (PL 96-272) "The principle of making reasonable efforts to reunify families is too frequently misinterpreted to mean reunifying families at all costs--even abusive families that are really families in name only" (Reasonable Efforts, 105th Cong 1997)

National data provide a certain number of support for these concerns. The number of children in sustain care has been rising above time. While at the extremity of 1986, there were approximately 280000 children in out-of-home care (Tatara, 1994) that estimate had climbed to 523000 through 2003 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2005a). Part of the increase in the foster care population be the effected from an imbalance between feed care entries and exits: through every part of the 1990s, entries exceeded exits in greatest in quantity large states (Wulczyn, Hislop, & Goerge 2000) Based upon point-in-time counts of all children in nurse care in FY 2002, the mean extent of stay for children in out-of-home care was 32 month and the median longitudinal dimensions of stay 18 months, while approximately 20% of children who left care in fiscal year 2002 had been in care three years or more (U Department of Health and Human Services, 2005b) Moreover, almost half of the 126000 children in care "waiting" for adoption--children either with a case plan goal of adoption or who had parental rights terminated for the two parents--had been waiting three or more years (USDHHS, 2005b) Longitudinal data exhibit similar trends (for California data see: Needell et al., 2005)

For children who have been reunified, there is a relatively high rate of re-abuse and re-entry to care. In 44 states reporting these data, approximately 8% of children experience after maltreatment within six months of the initial referral (USDHHS, 2005c) In California, approximately 13% of children discharged from care re-enter the a whole within 12 months (Needell et al., 2005)

As single means of addressing these issues, Congres passed PL 105-89 in 1997 with expectations of reducing children's stays in sustain care, and expediting alternative permanency options for children who can not get back home. ASFA did little to supporting cushion parents' capacities or opportunities to reunify with their children; the law was chiefly designed to address issues faced by means of children unlikely to reunify and those for whom reunification might verify hazardous.

ASFA makes use of three primary avenues in its effort to put in motion more children to permanency quickly. First, it decreases from 18 month to 12 the time allowed for parents to reunify with their children initially established below the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 next to the first it provides a number of mechanisms to encourage adoption of children. Third, states must make reasonable efforts not solitary to preserve and reunify families, on the other hand also to find alternative permanent abiding-places for children should reunification fail. ASFA clarifies that these efforts may be made concurrently with efforts to reunify the family. ASFA also enables child welfare agencies to gainsay reunification services to some parents below certain conditions (hereafter referred to as reunification exceptions) (Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997)